Opel Corsa 2012 News

The biggest change, according to Carparazzi, is a total rework of the old-fashioned and low-quality interior. The Corsa also gets a new face taken from the baby Adam and there could also be more power when the car arrives here towards the end of the year. Here late this year with little change from current pricing. This reporter is on Twitter: @paulwardgover    

The Corsa is dowdy and downmarket inside, but there is the promise of improvements in an updated car being tested in Scandinavia.  

A pair of Corsa mini cars is running on local roads as Opel confirms seven individual models for its start-up work as a standalone import brand down under.Opel executives confirm Volkswagen as their target in Australia, both for its recent sales growth and success in winning buyers to a relatively upscale European brand.But the company is taking a low-key approach as it joins upscale Infiniti from Japan and supercar maker McLaren as the newest additions to a showroom lineup in Australia that is closing fast on 50 individual car brands."We have our launch lineup now absolutely set in stone. We have played it down until now. We wanted to be sure we had every car we wanted," says Michelle Lang of Opel Australia."And we have the first evaluation cars here now."Opel has the hot Astra GTC coupe as its headliner - complete with …. - in a surprising varied range.When sales begin on September 1 it will have the baby Corsa with three and five-door hatchback bodies, the Astra small car as both a hatch and tourer wagon, the GTC coupe and the Camry-sized Insignia as a sedan and tourer."Opel has always historically offered an aspirational, well designed German car at an affordable price point. We think we will be able to carve out that niche in Australia," Lang says.The biggest question still to be answered is the pricing of the Opels, and how they will sit against the Volkswagen Polo, Golf and Passat - as well as benchmark cars including the Mazda3 and Ford Mondeo - in showrooms. But Lang says there will not be any exchange-rate-driven boost for buyers, despite the recent strength of the Australian dollar."We cannot confirm any pricing, but we're pretty comfortable and we haven't had to adjust that. We're really confident that we're offering great value.""We are going to be pitched fairly and squarely at the Volkwagen segment. But it's more than a price point, it's how they cars are equipped and the amount of power."While Opel is locked for 2012, Lang says the hottest future model from the brand - the baby Opel Junior  that will be pitched against the Fiat 500 - is not a target for 2013."Not at this stage. We've got some really exciting models next year, but the Junior is not one of them."Opel is benefitting from a $13.4 billion investment by GM Europe in new products over the next three years that includes everything from tiny new green engines and battery-powered city runabouts to all-new models. 

One of those could be the Junior, a 3.7-metre city car that's just a year away from production and planned to slot in below the Corsa - once a Barina - in Europe.

... when the European brand sets up shop outside the GM Holden umbrella for the first time.The baby Corsa is on the wish list for local sales and that means we could also get the baby SUV being developed as part of the Corsa family.

Australia probably won't see a hot European Corsa in the Holden Special Vehicles line-up any time soon.The Corsa VXR has been assessed as a potential starter below the turbocharged Astra VXR, which is doing solid but uninspiring numbers for HSV, but has been dismissed as too expensive.It will be too costly to import and prepare for Australian duty, even though HSV boss Tom Walkinshaw likes the car and sees the need to broaden the base for the hot Holden company.“The problem you have with Corsa is that to produce cars in Europe is expensive, so the core car ends up expensive before you start working on it,” Walkinshaw says.“It's a nice little car, but whether you could actually work on it, then get it into that price envelope to get it into the market is still eluding us. We'll look at other base products available in the GM network and decide if there are any we could work on that would be applicable to this market.”The Corsa VXR has a turbocharged 1.6-litre four-cylinder engine that develops 143kW and 260Nm, good enough to reach 100km/h in 6.8 seconds with a top of more than 220km/h. In Europe it competes against the Peugeot 207 GT and Renault Clio Sport.HSV is looking to push the Astra with a limited-edition model from Britain, called the Nurburgring, and will take its 2.0-litre turbo engine for use in a new Elfin sports car.But it cannot make a business case for the smaller Corsa.“The Corsa is a terrific sporty hot hatch, but because Holden does not have that product range, the after-sales support or parts supply, the business case is not as attractive. We'd have to do it ourselves,” HSV managing director Scott Grant says.Despite the Corsa failure, Walkinshaw says HSV is committed to expanding its range beyond V8 Commodores.“We'll broaden the offering over the next few years to cover more of the market,” he says.“It's not powerplant driven. It's about getting younger people into our products.”He draws a parallel between how HSV works with GM Holden and the operation of AMG and Mercedes-Benz.“We make the high-end performance prestige model in that brand and that's what we will continue to do,” he says.However, changing market forces also mean HSV will canvas other four-cylinder models in the future and Grant says the Astra VXR experience had been good for the company.“Eighty-one per cent of VXR customers have never bought a HSV car before and half of them are females,” he says.But Grant says there are still three requirements for a vehicle to join the HSV line-up.“It has to be complementary to Holden, it has to fit our brand DNA and, economically, it has to make sense.”